The landscape of college football is shifting, and whispers of a massive overhaul are growing louder every day. According to a recent episode of the “Locked On College Football” podcast hosted by Spencer McLaughlin, the Power Four conferences—the SEC, Big Ten, ACC, and Big 12—are quietly crafting a radical proposal to reshape the NCAA’s governance structure.

Power Conferences Pushing Schools For A “No-Sue” Pact In The New NCAA

This new entity, dubbed the College Sports Commission, would take control from the NCAA and regulate Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) compensation, transfer portal activity, and rule violations. However, according to McLaughlin, there’s a twist to this new arrangement, which is not very sunshine and roses.

Schools that join this system would surrender their right to sue, a move that could lock them into a tightly controlled framework or cause them to face expulsion from their conference.

The NCAA’s authority has eroded in recent years, battered by court losses and an inability to enforce NIL and transfer rules effectively. As McLaughlin noted, citing Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger, the NCAA “just shows up and hands out punishments that nobody cares about.”

Legal challenges, like Tennessee’s successful lawsuit against the NCAA over NIL violations, have exposed the organization’s vulnerable side. This was all the reason Power Four conferences needed to step into and fill this void, by any means necessary.

They are proposing a new entity led by a CEO, similar to a professional sports commissioner, to oversee athlete compensation and compliance. This commission would enforce a $20.5 million per-school revenue-sharing cap, starting in 2025–26, and police third-party NIL deals through a clearinghouse operated by Deloitte to ensure “fair market value.”

The catch, as McLaughlin pointed, is very “totalitarian” in nature, according to many. In this new arrangement, schools opting into this system would have to give up their ability to sue the commission over its rules.

This clause aims to shield the new entity from the legal battles that have plagued the NCAA. “It’s a crazy punishment,” McLaughlin said. “If you don’t want to be told what to do… you’re out of the conference.”

Central to this proposal is a plan to have a Big Four accounting firm, likely Deloitte, assess NIL deals for fair market value. Any deal worth $600 or more tied to a school-affiliated entity would face scrutiny to prevent “pay-for-play” arrangements.

McLaughlin warned that this could slash player earnings, as Dellenger’s reporting suggests 80% of current NIL deals might be deemed overvalued.

The House Settlement

The proposed commission dovetails with the House v. NCAA settlement, which awaits final approval on July 7, 2025. The settlement, preliminarily approved in October 2024, will distribute $2.78 billion in backpay to athletes from 2016 onward and allow schools to share up to $20.5 million annually with players.

However, it imposes roster limits (e.g., 105 for football) and requires NIL deal disclosures, raising Title IX and fairness concerns. McLaughlin points at the settlement’s uncertainty, noting that state laws, like Tennessee’s, could undermine enforcement by permitting direct payments if the settlement fails.

KEEP READING: 2025 Way-Too-Early College Football Top 25 Power Rankings

In the end, whether this new NCAA takes hold or collapses under legal scrutiny, one thing is certain: college football’s future hangs in the balance, and the next few months will be a mad scramble for power, money, and control.

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TALLAHASSEE, Fla. – NiJaree Canady tossed a two-hit shutout against No. 5 seed Florida State and added a solo home run in the seventh inning Thursday evening to propel No. 12 Texas Tech to a 3-0 victory in the NCAA Tallahassee Super Regional opener at JoAnne Graf Field.

 

Canady (29-6) was near perfect in the circle as she didn’t allow a base runner until the fifth inning when the Seminoles (49-11) put two on with one out. Canady found her way out of trouble, though, thanks to a sprinting Demi Elder, who raced to catch a foul ball in left field followed by one of her four strikeouts in the win.

 

It marked the only time the Seminoles put a runner in scoring position as Florida State (49-11) was limited to only a single from Shelby McKenzie in the fifth and then a leadoff single from Katie Dack to start the seventh. The complete game shutout was Canady’s sixth of the season and the fifth for the Red Raiders (49-12) in their last seven games dating back to the Big 12 Championship title run. Tech has now recorded a shutout in 25 of its 49 wins, which leads the NCAA.

 

Canady, who only needed 79 pitches to secure Texas Tech’s first-ever Super Regional win, also helped power the Red Raiders with her bat, smashing a leadoff solo home run in the seventh inning. It was her third home run in the past four games after going deep against both Brown and Mississippi State last weekend in a quick sweep of the NCAA Lubbock Regional.

 

The Red Raiders led from the get-go thanks to the speed of Mihyia Davis, who singled to start the game and scored on a double steal attempt in the first inning for an early 1-0 lead. Texas Tech’s 9-1-2 part of the order combined for six of its eight hits with Davis finishing 2-for-4 overall with Alexa Langeliers and Hailey Toney both going 2-for-3 with Langeliers also reaching for a third time via a walk.

 

The first-inning run marked the fourth time in as many games the Red Raiders have scored in the opening frame, pushing all the momentum to Texas Tech’s side before Canady even hit the circle. The Red Raiders are now 30-1 this season when scoring in the opening inning and 43-5 overall when putting runs on the scoreboard first.

 

Alana Johnson added to the lead in the fourth with a solo home run to straightaway center field, her second long ball already in the NCAA postseason and ninth of the season. The home run chased Florida State starter Ashtyn Danley (14-2), who suffered only her second loss of the season after giving up two runs (one earned) off four hits and two walks in her 3.1 innings of work.

 

The Seminoles sent three pitchers to the circle in the loss as Julia Apsel threw 1.1 shutout innings with Annabelle Widra following by surrendering only the Canady home run in the seventh over her 2.1 innings. The Red Raiders struck out only twice against the Florida State pitching staff with the two relievers giving up four combined hits.

 

The victory adds to Texas Tech’s historic season as the Red Raiders are now one win away from their first-ever appearance at the Women’s College World Series in Oklahoma City. Game two of the three-game series is set for 3 p.m. Friday on ESPN2.

College baseball’s regular season is over and conference tournaments are underway. Soon, it will be time for the NCAA Tournament to begin with eight teams hoping to make the College World Series.

By EDDIE PELLS, AP National Writer

The College Football Playoff will go to a more straightforward way of filling the bracket next season, announcing Thursday that it will place teams strictly on where they are ranked instead of moving pieces around to reward conference champions.

Ten conference commissioners and Notre Dame’s athletic director came to the unanimous agreement they needed to shift the model that drew complaints last season.

The new format will no longer guarantee an opening bye week for the four highest-ranked league champions, reserving that benefit for the four top-ranked teams in general. The change was widely expected after last season’s jumbled bracket gave byes to Big 12 champion Arizona State and Mountain West champion Boise State, even though they were ranked 12th and ninth, respectively, by the playoff selection committee.

That system made the rankings and the seedings in the tournament two different things and resulted in some matchups — for instance, the quarterfinal between top-ranked Oregon and eventual national champion Ohio State — that came earlier than they otherwise might have.

“After evaluating the first year of the 12-team Playoff, the CFP Management Committee felt it was in the best interest of the game to make this adjustment,” said Rich Clark, executive director of the CFP.

The five highest-ranked conference champions will still be guaranteed spots in the playoff, meaning it’s possible there could be a repeat of a different sort of shuffling seen last season when CFP No. 16 Clemson was seeded 12th in the bracket after winning the Atlantic Coast Conference. That ended up costing 11th-ranked Alabama a spot in the playoff.

Under the new arrangement, the four top-ranked conference champions will still receive $8 million for their leagues — representing the $4 million they earn for making the playoff and $4 million for advancing to the quarterfinals.

“That was the commissioners’ way of — at least for this year — holding to the commitment that they have made financially to those teams, those conference champions in particular, that would have been paid those amounts under the former system that we used last year,” Clark told ESPN .

Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey was among those who pushed for the change in the upcoming second year of the 12-team playoff, though he remained cautious about it being approved because of the unanimous vote needed.

Smaller conferences had a chance to use the seeding issue as leverage for the next set of negotiations, which will come after this season and could include an expansion to 14 teams and more guaranteed bids for certain leagues. The SEC and Big Ten will have the biggest say in those decisions.

As it stands, this will be the third different playoff system for college football in the span of three years. For the 10 years leading into last season’s inaugural 12-team playoff, the CFP was a four-team affair. The seeding change was first reported by ESPN, which last year signed a six-year, $7.8 billion deal to televise the expanded playoff.

The playoff for the upcoming season begins Dec. 19 on the campuses of the teams ranked 5-8. All games beginning with the quarterfinals will be at neutral sites, ending with the title game on Jan. 19 at Hard Rock Stadium outside Miami.

A look at possible first-round matchups had straight seeding been in play last season. (with result of actual matchup in parenthesis):

— No. 12 Clemson at No. 5 Notre Dame. The Tigers still would have gotten in despite being ranked 16th. Notre Dame, a team without a conference, could benefit from this new arrangement because it is now eligible for a bye. (No. 5 Texas 38, No. 12 Clemson 24).

— No. 11 Arizona State at No. 6 Ohio State. The Sun Devils face a juggernaut instead of receiving a first-round bye. (No. 6 Penn State 38, No. 11 SMU 10).

— No. 10 SMU at No. 7 Tennessee. Yes, Alabama, 11th in CFP’s final ranking, still would’ve been the odd man out because of Clemson. (No. 7 Notre Dame 27, No. 10 Indiana 17).

— No. 9 Boise State at No. 8 Indiana. It could’ve been Ashton Jeanty vs. the Hoosiers in a matchup of two of the season’s best stories. (No. 8 Ohio State 42, No. 9 Tennessee 17).

Byes: No. 1 Oregon, No. 2 Georgia, No. 3 Texas, No. 4 Penn State. Could Texas or Penn State have gone further without having to play that extra game?

___

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The planned presidential commission on college athletics has reportedly been put on pause.

The move comes just a week after former Alabama football coach Nick Saban, who was reportedly selected to be the commission co-chair with Texas Tech billionaire booster Cody Campbell, downplayed the need for such a commission.

“To be honest with you, I don’t really know much about this commission. I don’t really know what this commission would do,” Saban told reporters. “You know, I think we know what needs to be done, I just think we’ve got to figure out who’s got the will to do it.”

According to On3, President Donald Trump will eventually form the commission to reform name, image and likeness (NIL), but the president wants to wait until after U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) pushes through his federal legislation. Cruz has pushed for change in the NIL world, likening it to the “Wild, Wild West.

“Donald Trump’s presidential commission on college sports has been paused,” On3’s Pete Nakos posted on X. “Expectation is commission will eventually be formed, but is being delayed as U.S. Senator Ted Cruz works to push through federal legislation.”

Nakos added that Cruz led the pause.

Saban left Alabama’s head coaching position in January 2024. He later cited the landscape of college football with NIL, the transfer portal and other aspects for retiring.

The legendary coach reportedly told Trump that he believed that the flood of money had damaged college sports.

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Bob DeChiara-Imagn Images

College football’s NIL Era has created plenty of headaches for teams, especially smaller programs that don’t have the means to compete with bigger schools. Based on what Richmond coach Russ Huseman had to say, that problem has reared its head yet again thanks to the series of events that led to his kicker unexpectedly transferring to Maryland.

The NCAA had years to prepare for the seemingly inevitable day its student-athletes would be allowed to profit off of their name, image, and likeness, but the approach it opted to take after essentially flipping the switch overnight in the wake of the landmark Supreme Court ruling that forced its hand has left a lot to be desired.

It’s no surprise that schools have done everything in their power to exploit the current NIL landscape that has essentially created a market where many players are constantly on the hunt for the highest bidder—a reality that obviously benefits the programs with the deepest pockets.

The football team at the University of Richmond is pretty far from that end of the spectrum thanks to its status as an FCS squad at a school with less than 4,000 students. It is able to take advantage of the NIL fund known as The Spiders’ Collective, but most of its players aren’t exactly swimming in cash.

However, based on what head coach Russ Huesman had to say earlier this week, former Richmond kicker Sean O’Haire has managed to secure a pretty sizeable payday courtesy of the Maryland Terrapins, who he accused of tampering after losing the redshirt freshman at the start of May.

O’Haire hails from Ireland and had never played football before arriving at Richmond on a scholarship last year but quickly proved he could hang as a kicker by making all 12 of the field goals he attempted in the five games he appeared in.

All signs pointed to the Irishman playing for Richmond in 2025, as he’d been partaking in practices and participated in the team’s spring game before announcing he was transferring to Maryland at the start of the month—a development Huseman is not thrilled with based on what he had to say via the Richmond Times-Dispatch:

“Maryland tampered with our kicker and gave him $50,000. They came in, they tampered. The kid had zero interest in transferring, they offered him money. It happens all over the country, and there’s nothing the NCAA’s going to do about it.

“So, Maryland just decided to come in. They liked our kicker and offered him money…It’s ridiculous, pretty frustrating… He’s got an unbelievable future.

This was not on him. This was on Maryland. This was on his handlers. It was on a lot of other people that I’m not real happy with.”

At the end of the day, this is par for the course when it comes to the current state of college athletics, but it’s pretty easy to understand why Huseman is frustrated.